Don't waste your translation budget

The New Year is rapidly approaching. Here are some common translation buying mistakes that will quickly deplete your 2010 translation budget.

1. Choosing the Cheapest Provider

When a translation provider prices a translation very low, it is likely they are using non-native speaking translators (or worse!) and the quality will surely suffer. When you buy solely on price, you risk spending much more time and money on the translation than anticipated.

Consider an internal review of a poor quality translation. Every hour an employee spends reviewing or revising a poor quality translation adds at least $20 to the cost of the translation. A common misconception is that using internal company resources to work on a translation is “free.” Time is money, so any amount of time you and your colleagues spend rectifying this situation instead of performing your core tasks will be at a cost to your company.

Now consider the impact of a poor quality translation on your brand and company image. Before you issue a purchase order for that low cost translation, ask yourself these questions:

• What bad thing will happen to me if the quality of this translation is poor?
• How will our customers feel if we provide them with a sub-standard translation?
• Is it acceptable to us that our brand may be tarnished as a result of publishing bad information?

When quality matters, give your business to a reputable provider. Make sure the translation is done by a native speaker. Ask your provider what kind of liability coverage they have against damages caused as a result of a poor quality translation. Even when quality is not a key decision factor, speak with your provider. They may be able to offer a good solution at a reduced rate.

2. Not Using Translation Memory

Translation Memory (TM) can be a valuable asset for your company, but many translation buyers do not understand what it is or what benefits it can provide. Translation Memory is a database that stores segments of text and their translations for reuse in future projects. Some of the key benefits of Translation Memory include:

• Consistency: No matter who is translating your documents, a TM will ensure that your company’s unique phrases and terminology will be consistent across documents in your organization.
• Speed: Because a TM stores previously translated text, translators need only translate a segment once.
• Cost reduction: Translation providers charge a significantly reduced rate for text that has been previously translated. The reason they charge at all is because the material still needs to be verified for accuracy given the context.

Because a TM increases with every project, the more you translate, the more you will save through TM. After building their TM with Applied Language Solutions for one year, our customers realized TM savings at an average of about 10-15% per project. It may not seem like much, but with a yearly volume of 500,000 words, that adds up to $6,000 to $10,000 in savings. Over a greater period of time, consistent use of your TM can cut translation costs up to 70%.

3. Poor Organization

A well-organized project will not only save money, but will reduce stress and help to ensure a quality translation. Before you issue that Purchase Order:

• Review the original document to cut out parts that are redundant, unnecessary, or irrelevant to your target markets. This will improve your materials and save money since there will be fewer words to translate.
• Finalize the document before sending it for translation. Changes to the source material during the process can be messy and expensive.
• Send the right document for translation. It sounds obvious, but we’ve proceeded with translations before only to have the customer realize they sent us the wrong file. Unfortunately, when something like this happens, the customer must incur the cost of any translation that was done.

4. Setting Unreasonable Deadlines

When you submit a project to your service provider, set reasonable deadlines to avoid incurring rush fees.

When setting deadlines, consider that a translator can usually translate about 2,000 words per day and a proofreader can proofread about 6,000 to 8,000 words per day. Therefore, for a 4,000-word translation, you should allow at least two days for translation and one day for proofreading. Pushing these limitations may result in a rush fee, so don’t do it if you don’t really need it. Most language services providers will charge rush fees of 20-50% for non-standard delivery times.

When possible, it’s always a good idea to add an extra day or two to your deadline. This will give the linguists more time to work and will help ensure a better quality translation – that doesn’t require expensive fixes later.

5. Not Providing the Original Documents

When a customer does not provide an original document for translation, service providers will often tack on additional charges for extracting text, typesetting, file engineering and re-creating layouts.

These documents are frequently submitted to translation providers and are difficult to work with, costing you more money:

• PDF: It takes a matter of seconds to convert an MSWord document into a PDF. However, it can take hours to extract text from a PDF document and re-create its proper layout in MSWord, especially when Optical Character Recognition (OCR) fails. When possible, submit the original document from which the PDF was created.
• Fax: It can take many hours to transcribe text from a faxed document into a word processor. This is made especially difficult when the fax is grainy or hard to read. When possible, submit the soft copy of the document.
• JPEG Graphics: Desktop publishing specialists can usually work with any graphic in any format, but without the original file it will take more time and cost more money. When possible, submit the original Photoshop (.psd) file. It’s cheaper and the quality will be better.